The field of the invention relates generally to extracorporeal circuits for extracorporeal treatment. The field relates specifically to stowing the flexible lines of an extracorporeal circuit prior to and after use of the circuit in a blood treatment therapy and packaging extracorporeal circuits prior to their use.
Blood treatment systems, such as used for dialysis or ultrafiltration treatments, typically include disposable extracorporeal circuit and an extracoporeal treatment monitor on which the extracorporeal circuit is mounted. The extracorporeal circuit includes flexible lines providing passages for blood, blood treatment fluids, dialysate and other liquids. The lines connect, for example, to a vascular access device associated with a patient, sources of priming and treatment fluids, containers to receive dialysate and other liquids discharged from the extracorporeal circuit and other devices used for treating blood.
Several of the lines of a disposable extracorporeal circuit have free ends with connectors. These free ends connect to the vascular access device of a patient, sources of liquids and containers in or on the monitor, and the other devices associated with treating blood. The connections of the free ends of the lines are typically made after the extracorporeal circuit is mounted to the monitor and the patient is ready for blood treatment therapy. Until these connections are made, the free ends are capped to ensure that the passages in the lines remain sterile and undamaged.
The caps on most conventional extracorporeal circuits are small individual components. A cap may be a plastic luer lock cap that entirely separates from the extracorporeal circuit once removed from the free end of a line. After being removed from the ends of the lines, the caps tend to be lost or discarded. When lost or discarded, the caps are not available to recap the line after the blood treatment therapy and when the extracorporeal circuit is ready to be disposed.
As an alternative to a cap, a dummy luer lock connection in the housing of a bubble trap chamber is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,071,269. The dummy luer lock is a connector for a free end of a line in an extracorporeal circuit where the connector is used solely to hold the end of a line when not in use.
The free ends of lines tend to be associated with relatively lengthy sections of the lines that reach from the extracorporeal circuit to the vascular access device, source of blood or liquid or container. Specifically, the free ends are on lines that tend to be thin, plastic tubes which may have lengths of a meter or more. Extracorporeal circuits tend to have several lines, such as six or more. The lines with free ends tend to become disordered and tangled before they are connected for a blood treatment therapy. Keeping the lines untangled and ordered is an ongoing problem of extracorporeal circuits. There is a long felt need for devices and techniques to securely cap the free ends of lines of an extracorporeal circuit and stow the free ends in an orderly manner.
In addition to a need for organizing and stowing the lines of a disposable extracorporeal circuit, there is a long felt need to enhance the sterilization of a disposable extracorporeal circuit. Aseptic packaging systems inject ethylene oxide (EtO) into packaging for medical devices to sterilize the device. Ansari and Datta, AN OVERVIEW OF STERILIZATION METHODS FOR PACKAGING MATERIALS USED IN ASEPTIC PACKAGING SYSTEMS, Trans IChemE, Vol. 81, Part C, pp. 57-65 (2003). It can be difficult for the EtO injected into packaging to reach the interior passages of the lines of the extracorporeal circuit. There is a long-felt need to enhance the delivery of EtO into packaging for disposable extracorporeal circuits and, particularly, to the passages of the lines.